James T. Cleland - "The Way at the River Kwai" (June 24, 1962)

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-	Let us pray.	0:30
	Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts	0:34
	be acceptable in thy sight.	0:39
	Oh, Lord our strength and our redeemer.	0:43
	Amen.	0:48
	Do you recall back in 1954, the publication of a novel,	0:56
	"The Bridge Over the River Kwai" by a French author.	1:04
	It's the story of the building of a wooden bridge	1:12
	by British prisoners of war on the Siam Myanmar border	1:16
	to carry the railroad that would enable the Japanese	1:24
	to invade India.	1:29
	Do you remember the triangular contest	1:33
	between the sadistic Japanese colonel,	1:36
	who must have the bridge,	1:42
	the militarily ritualistic British colonel	1:46
	who supervises its building	1:51
	and the cloak and dagger boys from Calcutta	1:56
	who want to blow it up.	2:00
	If you did not read the book, perhaps you saw the movie	2:04
	with ceramic goodness as Colonel Nicholson.	2:08
	Your feet are right now probably tapping out the theme song.	2:14
	Colonel Bogey.	2:21
	I nearly asked the organist to use Colonel Bogey	2:23
	as the offertory voluntary,	2:27
	which would be almost as imperious a request	2:31
	as the student who asked for the sweetheart of Sigma Chi	2:35
	at his wedding, I just re-read the book.	2:38
	And I would like to receive the movie,	2:44
	now the river kwai flowed into the chapel	2:49
	this past spring through the channel of a preacher's sermon.	2:54
	He illustrated his theme with two or three stories	3:03
	from a volume published this year	3:07
	by Ernest Gordon entitled through the valley of the kwai.	3:10
	Now I read that book recently	3:18
	and it is the text of this sermon	3:21
	through the valley of the kwai to be a best seller.	3:26
	It is a Spellbinder.	3:33
	Whereas the bridge over the river Kwai	3:36
	is fiction though, based on personal experiences	3:39
	in Japanese prison camps and into China and Malaya,	3:44
	this unloader volume is the biographical narrative of three	3:49
	and a half years in the camps	3:57
	whose inhabitants actually built the bridge.	3:59
	It is written by one who was a professional soldier,	4:05
	an officer in the other guy, islands Sutherland Highlanders.	4:10
	Let me give you a resume of what happened	4:15
	at the river kwai.	4:18
	The background can be synced in two	4:21
	or three paragraphs of Gordon's.	4:23
	During the four years, they were in control.	4:27
	The Japanese military violated every civilized code.	4:31
	They murdered prisoners overtly by banner thing,	4:37
	shooting drowning or decapitation.	4:42
	They murdered them covertly by working	4:47
	them beyond human endurance starving them, torturing them	4:50
	and denying them medical care.	4:57
	The survivors built the bridge.	5:02
	Unwillingly says the author at Vienna point	5:05
	and under the bamboo lash taking any risks to sabotage	5:12
	the operation. Whenever the opportunity arose lying	5:18
	in the death house,	5:26
	which was the prisoner's name for the camp hospital,	5:29
	Gordon overheard two medical offices discussing his case.	5:33
	He's had the works malaria dysentery,	5:39
	beriberi plus some kind of blood infection	5:45
	we cant identify.	5:50
	Oh yes.	5:52
	He's also had an appendectomy and on top that a bad case	5:53
	of diptheria, which left him without the use of his legs.	5:58
	Now that's the background.	6:04
	Now the first reaction to this kind of existence on the part	6:07
	of the prisoners was an upsurge of religion.	6:11
	Church services, Bible readings, private prayer.	6:16
	It didn't last fought. It didn't work.	6:23
	God declined to be put to use as a personal expedient.	6:29
	The counter reaction was our widespread self-centeredness,	6:39
	which revealed itself in selfishness,	6:44
	hatred and fear Gordon calls it.	6:47
	The law of the jungle men stole from one another.	6:50
	They curse so creatively that they constructed	6:57
	whole sentences in which every word was a curse.	7:02
	Yet the strongest still died.	7:07
	The Wiliest and the cleverest perish with the wheat	7:12
	Gordon wrote her letter to his parents saying goodbye.	7:19
	And then things began to happen,	7:27
	which are told us in a chapter entitled miracles	7:29
	by the river kwai.	7:35
	Some of Gordon's friends built him a hut	7:38
	where he could sweat out his illness in quiet	7:44
	and if necessary, die in peace, an Englishman	7:47
	by the name of dusty Miller.	7:54
	Remember his name dusty Miller came voluntarily	7:57
	and daily to be the gardens putrid ulcers.	8:03
	With the help of another soldier,	8:09
	the officer was nursed back to life.	8:12
	Then stories of voluntary martyrdom began to be whispered.	8:16
	There was the soldier who died of starvation	8:23
	because he gave his rations to her sick friend.	8:28
	There was the soldier who confessed	8:35
	and confessed must be put in, in inverted commas,	8:37
	the soldier who confessed that he had stolen.	8:44
	And that's in quotes too	8:48
	that he had stolen a missing shovel because he saw	8:50
	that the guard was angry enough to shoot every man	8:54
	in the squad.	8:58
	And that soldier was beaten to death where he stood.	9:00
	And when the tools were counted again	9:06
	at the guard house, no shovel was missing.	9:08
	listened to the ending of that story.	9:14
	Admiration for the soldier, transcended hatred	9:17
	for the Japanese	9:24
	and Australian was decapitated because he was caught outside	9:27
	the prison fence, trying to obtain medicine	9:32
	from the natives for his sick friends.	9:35
	His last words to the agitated chaplain were cheer up Padre.	9:41
	It isn't as bad as all that I'll be. All right.	9:47
	Thus was the law of the jungle. Denied	9:54
	the law of the jungle is not the law for men	10:00
	because man can become a beast.	10:04
	He may become less than a beast.	10:09
	Now Gordon thought about this.	10:14
	He puzzled to find a common denominator.	10:16
	The two soldiers who cared for him,	10:21
	dusty Miller and did Miller were Christian,	10:23
	but one was Methodist and the other was Roman Catholic.	10:27
	Was there any word which linked to them and the others	10:32
	who had given up the law of the jungle?	10:35
	Could it be love?	10:39
	Does love of neighbor have any relation to a love of God	10:43
	to love from God?	10:48
	And so a new kind of life began in the camp.	10:52
	I discussion group was started by the Australians	10:57
	to find out what Christianity was about.	11:01
	Gordon was asked to lead it since he was a university man,	11:04
	but he was told that he had to lead it on one understanding	11:09
	the lads won't stand for any Sunday school stuff.	11:13
	What they want is the real Dingo.	11:19
	Well, they got it.	11:23
	And that class grew into the jungle university	11:25
	with a curriculum, which offered courses	11:30
	in history, economics, philosophy, mathematics, several	11:33
	of the sciences and at least nine languages,	11:38
	including Latin, Greek, Russian, and Sanskrit,	11:42
	an orchestra was formed.	11:48
	And the theater artificial legs were made for the legless	11:50
	who in turn made legs for the other legless	11:57
	men painted cars, pins Finch, and gave exhibitions.	12:01
	They invented drugs and anesthetic.	12:08
	They manufactured surgical instruments.	12:13
	They recovered respect even for the dead.	12:18
	Instead of being chucked into a common pit,	12:24
	each court received a personal barrier with a lectern cross	12:28
	to mark the grave casually quietly.	12:35
	A church was built.	12:42
	Gordon said he doesn't know who built it an open air church,	12:44
	a church, which was all doors.	12:50
	It was named the church of the captivity.	12:54
	Here are Gordon's words about it.	13:00
	The church was a fellowship of those who came in freedom	13:04
	and love to acknowledge their weakness,	13:12
	to seek a presence and to pray for their fellows.	13:18
	You notice that to acknowledge their weakness,	13:25
	to seek a presence and to pray for themselves, no,	13:30
	to pray for their fellows.	13:35
	The confession of Jesus Christ as Lord.	13:39
	Was the one requirement for membership.	13:43
	The church was made up of Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalians,	13:47
	Presbyterians, congregation, nation members,	13:50
	and former agnostics.	13:52
	sounds like the duke chapel.	13:54
	When the end of the war came well let me quote Gordon again.	13:59
	The incoming liberator's were so infuriated	14:05
	by what they saw.	14:09
	They wanted to shoot the Japanese guards on the spot.	14:11
	Only the intervention of the victims prevented them.	14:17
	Hatters were spared by that captive,	14:23
	not an eye for an eye.	14:29
	A limb for a limb this time.	14:32
	said these exhausted but forgiving man,	14:36
	and all this happened at a prisoner of war camp near	14:42
	the bridge over the river kwai.	14:48
	Now as I read this book,	14:55
	two passages from the new Testament surface	14:59
	from my subconscious memory, the two,	15:03
	which formed dollar morning lesson,	15:07
	let me quote a verse from each passage,	15:11
	hoping you will spot the known,	15:14
	which is common to both verse teacher.	15:18
	We know that you are true and teach	15:25
	the way of God Truthfully, that was said to Jesus, probably	15:29
	in sarcasm.	15:36
	The other verse, and Paul asked the high priest	15:38
	for letters to the synagogues at Damascus,	15:42
	so that if he found any belonging to the way men or women,	15:46
	he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.	15:53
	The noun common to both passages is way	15:58
	W A Y	16:02
	one of the many new Testament names for	16:05
	the Christian manner of life,	16:08
	for the walk and conversation of those who seek to implement	16:11
	the will of God through the teaching of Jesus,	16:17
	the way with a capital w becomes a designation	16:21
	for the church.	16:26
	but why not?	16:28
	Jesus said, I am the way.	16:31
	And the church is the body of Christ.	16:36
	Now such a way has always two complimentary	16:42
	and interacting aspects.	16:46
	One is theological it's view of God	16:49
	who is conceived and analogically	16:56
	as a father, rather than as a king or a judge.	16:58
	The other is ethical the day by day, living here on earth,	17:05
	which is worthy up and satisfactory to such a father, God,	17:13
	which comes first for some people,	17:20
	the theological for others, the ethical,	17:24
	but both groups would agree that the two aspects are needed	17:29
	for proper explication and application of the way	17:34
	some belief first and that second	17:41
	for others action leads to belief, faith and works	17:45
	works, and faith never independent, always inter dependent.	17:52
	Have you ever thought of John Wesley's followers	18:00
	as the people of the way?	18:03
	Isn't that? What Methodist means?	18:08
	The Greek word for the way is hodos	18:11
	h o d o s	18:15
	Methodist is properly Metta hodos that is after the way.	18:18
	According to the way the name you should know	18:26
	was originally one of several applied derisively	18:30
	by fellow students,	18:34
	to the members of the religious association formed	18:35
	at Oxford university, by John and Charles Wesley and others,	18:38
	no longer the term of duration.	18:44
	Christians are people of the way in Jerusalem, in Damascus,	18:47
	at Oxford on the bank of the river kwai.	18:56
	No, I can almost hear your reaction to all this	19:04
	such a way of life may be possible.	19:10
	In fact, it is possible in a closed society,	19:14
	especially one which is small in the early trip	19:20
	in Wesley's holy club in a prison camp from which death	19:28
	is the only escape it's possible in the orders	19:34
	of the Roman Catholic church in the sale groups	19:39
	within Protestantism.	19:44
	But it is impossible unfeasible for the Christian	19:46
	who has to live in daily contact with the wattle.	19:52
	As most of us have to exist.	19:57
	Now, this critic has a case.	20:02
	We could document it from the last chapter of Gordon's book.	20:06
	He retired to a world in which he was a stranger.	20:13
	The whole Porter in a Glasgow hotel told them that	20:23
	his war stained luggage could not be left in the hole.	20:28
	The blood and mud would upset the sensitivities of civilian.	20:34
	His first impressions of civilian,	20:45
	were the realization of hatred fears and model cynicism.	20:47
	Here is his description of the church in Scotland.	20:56
	After my retirement, I had gone to church every Sunday,	21:01
	but what I saw and heard depressed me,	21:06
	the sermon has belonged to a different age.	21:11
	They suggested Victorian powers,	21:15
	elderly people dressed in black horsehair chairs	21:19
	and antimacassar.	21:24
	We had seen a vision of FOD horizons conduct glimpse	21:28
	of the city of God in all its beauty.	21:34
	The critic has an argument, but that's another argument.	21:42
	The way was adopted in the first century	21:50
	and by Wesley and the river Kwai	21:56
	as the only method of transforming existence	22:02
	into life of metamorphosing,	22:07
	ugliness into beauty of creating harmony	22:12
	out of discord.	22:19
	Are we really living in a much healthier situation today?	22:22
	What can we do? there's little,	22:32
	any of us can do about waddled problems?	22:35
	What about impersonal social conflict?	22:40
	But there is much that we can do within them the alumnae of	22:44
	the kwai and other health camps knew that	22:50
	some and took the ministry to share with the church,	22:56
	the vision they had seen in Thailand.	23:01
	Others became lay members of their local churches	23:06
	for the same reason.	23:10
	Others are by intention, teachers, welfare officers,	23:13
	research technicians, doctors in worship,	23:19
	and that work, they wanted to be in contact with people	23:25
	to share the good life which they had discovered in prison.	23:32
	It takes only a cup of cold water, a sick visit,	23:40
	a piece of clothing to get run into the kingdom	23:49
	if they are given in love.	23:56
	That is the way and yet.	24:00
	Lest we leave this house of God with either our rosy glow	24:11
	or a cynical smile.	24:19
	There's one other thing to be said.	24:21
	You recall dusty Miller	24:25
	who voluntarily bathed Gordon woulds.	24:29
	what happened to him.	24:34
	Gordon asked that question too	24:37
	when he was finally released, but what about Miller?	24:40
	He got the Japanese warrat officer in charge	24:45
	of his party down on him.	24:48
	What did he done wrong?	24:52
	That was it.	24:54
	He hadn't done anything wrong.	24:56
	The hated him because he couldn't break him.	25:01
	You know how he was a good man, if ever there was one,	25:07
	that's why he hated him.	25:13
	What did the nip do to him?	25:17
	He's strung them up to a tree.	25:20
	You mean?	25:23
	Yes, he crucified him	25:24
	the way is not walked in a rosy glow.	25:32
	That's little about it for the Senate to smile at	25:39
	it is a way which leads to the new Jerusalem,	25:45
	but across maybe a waste station on it,	25:50
	it is not a way for the idealist.	25:58
	It is a way for a realist.	26:04
	There's a footnote to be added to this sermon.	26:12
	Do you know what Gordon,	26:17
	the author of the book is now doing?	26:19
	He was a professional soldier.	26:23
	He is now the Dean of the chapel	26:29
	at Princeton university.	26:33
	Amen.	26:39
	Let us pray.	26:41

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "The Way at the River Kwai" (June 24, 1962)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4bp02453

Date:

June 24, 1962

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0189
ref5582_xz8
uachapelsermaud
duke:628585
dcrau002201
ark:/87924/r4bp02453
a1b58fee-5144-46fe-aa60-6762b47cdbda

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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James T. Cleland - "The Way at the River Kwai" (June 24, 1962)

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1. James T. Cleland - "The Way at the River Kwai" (June 24, 1962)

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James T. Cleland - "The Way at the River Kwai" (June 24, 1962)

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